Just under a quarter of a century ago, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein announced that he would cease cooperating with international arms inspectors. Throughout the 1980s, the International Atomic Energy Agency had given Iraq clean bills of health on its nuclear program. After Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 U.S.-led liberation of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein’s sons-in-law defected to Jordan with box loads of documents proving that Saddam had fooled inspectors, lied to the international community, and continued a covert nuclear program all along. It was this decadelong deception of the IAEA that led to the Additional Protocol to tighten the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s loopholes.
By Washington Examiner – Michael Rubin
Jul 27, 2022
Former President Bill Clinton responded to Saddam’s defiance by launching “Operation Desert Fox,” a four-day bombing campaign to compel Iraq to allow inspectors to resume their jobs. When a national security adviser had asked Joe Biden, then the ranking Democratic on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, what the political storm to such unilateral action might be, Biden advised Clinton to “put on his raincoat and launch away.” The campaign worked, and Saddam allowed inspectors to return.
That Saddam continued to bluff both the world and his own generals about his weapons program turned out to be a tragic mistake as it led to the mistaken intelligence that colored former President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq five years later, a decision that Biden at the time supported.
Today, Biden faces his own test. Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium has increased by more than an order of magnitude since the president scrapped former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “Maximum Pressure” campaign. Blaming former President Donald Trump is stupid because the president’s job is leading and not simply blaming and the timeline of Irán’s nuclear work finds such blame misplaced. The reality Iran now has enough uranium enriched to 60%, far above the needs of its civilian reactor, to push to the weapons-grade level needed for a Hiroshima-type bomb. Its breakout time is essentially short. The Iranian government, meanwhile, has stopped inspections mandated not by the 2015 Iran nuclear deal but by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and Tehran’s promise to abide by the terms of the Additional Protocol. The Iranian government has also switched off monitoring cameras in its nuclear facilities.
The challenge could not be starker. Biden may not remember his support for Desert Fox or his counsel not to worry about the political fallout, but what is at stake involves not only Iran but also the survival of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. If Biden does nothing, every other country considering a nuclear breakout, including Turkey, Egypt, and perhaps even Venezuela, might conclude the United States is a paper tiger and that there will be no consequences and only rewards for joining the nuclear weapons club.
Biden may fumble, paralyzed by his own sense that liberals on Twitter represent mainstream public opinion, but if he does not act, other countries might. This raises a nightmare scenario: If Israel, for example, strikes at Iran’s facilities but can’t finish the job given both the scale of Irán’s nuclear program and the country’s physical size, then it might stir up a hornet’s nest that will interrupt international shipping and destabilize the entire region.
Make no mistake: Military action is no solution. At best, it will delay Iran’s nuclear program at tremendous cost to blood and treasure while allowing the regime to justify its nuclear work and rally disaffected Iranians around the flag. But absent a shock Irán cannot afford, with “Maximum Pressure” at a minimum and perhaps an embargo to stop Iranian exports, Biden will become known as the president who fiddled while the Middle East burned.
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Read More: Washington Examiner – Biden’s ‘Desert Fox’ moment on Irán
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